24 June 2022 |

MoonPay Launching NFT Minting Platform

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Heyyyy everyone. Honestly I was going to say “Happy Friday” but it’s a shitty Friday—the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade allowing for states to ban abortions. 

Frankly was on the fence about writing about this—I have been trying to talk/write about politics less publicly as American politics is an absolute shitshow and there’s no semblance of “debate” anymore; just outright arguments and fights. But this is too important. 

I have a deep aversion to authority—I have since I was a child (just ask my mother.) So many folks that support banning abortions were so against wearing masks that the hypocrisy is a bit unbelievable. I fundamentally don’t think that the government should be telling anyone what to do with their personal life or their bodies. 

The worst part about this is that there doesn’t seem to be any solutions, at least that I can think of. Roughly 20 states have banned or restricted abortions. And if you’re a woman there, there’s not a thing you can do about it. I’m sure there will be protests and marches but the issue is none of those things actually work—activism isn’t action. 

What eats me is that this was predicted years ago—electing Trump would pack the Supreme Court with conservative judges who would overturn Roe v. Wade. Unfortunately, the liberals are too focused on making everything super PC and not allowing math in schools to focus on actual issues like women’s rights. I would tell them to get their priorities rights but all politicians in the US seem to have the same priority—fucking over the American people. 

IMO, the disconnect between the Government and the American public hasn’t been further apart. It’s disheartening to see America go back in time to the 1950’s but this is probably what the old people in Congress, the Supreme Court, and the Executive Branch want at the end of the day.

MoonPay Launches Minting Service, HyperMint

And the NFT ball continues to roll right into the Universal Pictures lot and Snoop Dog’s Death Row Records studio. Moonpay, the on/off ramp company that raised a $555 million Series A at a $3.5 billion valuation, announced a new minting platform, Hypermint. The product will let large scale brands and agencies to mint hundreds of millions of NFT’s a day – hence the name. 

The early partners on this are a who’s who of legacy IP owners—this includes folks like Fox, CAA (a massive Hollywood agency), and Universal Pictures. 

With more legacy firms getting interested in Web3, Hypermint unlocks the potential for these firms to onboard their IP into the crypto ecosystem. Pretty soon, you’ll be able to purchase a collectable NFT right alongside your movie theater popcorn (at least I hope…would have been sick to get an Iron Man NFT when I watched the first Avengers in theaters years ago.) 

A lof of you will be reading this and say “NFT’s are dead though! And so is crypto!” Ivan Soto-Wright, Moonpay’s CEO, acknowledged that crypto has been through some tough times, but is understanding that with this being a new asset class there will always be periods of volatility. While crypto prices are crashing, companies are still jumping head first into new ventures and partnerships. The value of crypto and digital assets is still being understood, but with the reimagining of the utilitarian use for these tokens, more opportunities will continue to present themselves and the market will continue to expand.

Twitter Tries Commerce Again

Everything old is new again! Twitter announced a new partnership with Shopify to enable Shopify Merchants to connect into Twitter Shopping more easily. You can read about the announcement here

Twitter’s tried this before—back in 2014, Twitter hired the ex CEO of Ticketmaster, Nathan Hubbard, as their head of commerce to make tweets more shoppable and purchasable. Back then, here’s what he said about the value Twitter had in the e-commerce arena:

  1. Twitter’s algorithms can help users see the right offers.
  2. Twitter is a hive for influential people.
  3. Society is moving towards more “on-demand services” and Twitter is a real-time network that exists in the moment.

All of these are still true today, arguably even more so.

I was a reporter that had to cover a lot of different topics back then (my main beat, this thing called fintech, wasn’t that popular and my editors always yelled at me to cover mainstream stuff for more clicks.) I was deeply fascinated by the intersection of social media and commerce—in my mind it makes a lot of sense! I talk about music on Twitter, it should recommend concert tickets in my area too. 

Back then, what ended up happening was that it was too difficult on the merchant side to get started; the inventory management and logistics of it all was really difficult. Pinterest also had issues with this, as did Instagram. 

I’m still bullish that Twitter can drive purchases, based on the amount of intent and social validation around products there is on the platform. We’ll see how impactful this partnership is for merchants looking to use Twitter Shopping in the future.